Thursday, September 04, 2008

Touch Of Grey....

It's more than just a divisive Grateful Dead song(some heads hate it, some don't. I happen to think it's a pretty damn good song-though it is blamed for the deterioration of the scene in the last few years of the Boys' existence)...It's also now a hair color product for men !!!

Is it just me, or has there been a real proliferation(SAT word-ding ding ding!!) of commercials on the tee vee for hair dye for men ? There's the commercial with Keith Hernandez, Emmitt Smith and Walt Frazier for the beard hair color product, and the one where the two little girls give the hair dye to their divorced or widowed father, saying-'It's time", and there's the one where the wife leaves the box of hair dye out for her husband-I would love to see the reaction if the roles were reversed on THAT one!

And there's a few others, too. Including the Touch Of Grey one, and the hook there is that it colors MOST of your hair, but leaves...you guessed it...just a "touch of grey". It shows these young at heart "dudes" surfing and doing other "shit that the young folks do", including this guy playing bass in a band that looks like he's wearing a wig!! Crazy, man...Crazy...

Do I have a point ? Not really. My hair started going grey when I was in 9th grade. it never occurred to me to color it. When I was in L.A., I worked next to a beauty salon, and there was a guy that worked in there that would always ask me when I was going to let him color my hair. i always laughed and answered "Never." Another amusing L.A.-grey hair anecdote-When i lived in L.A., the horse track wanted to get young folks in, so on Fridays, it was a dollar to get in, and beers and hot dogs were also a dollar, if you were under 30. Being 27 ish, my friends and I decided to take advantage of this. We go, and I get carded because the woman thinks I'm OVER 30.

By now(I'm 37...38 on the 10th-Hint hint!), my hair is about 90% grey. And my beard is about 60%. My beard has greyed slower-I'm not sure why that is.

Anyway, I guess what I'm wondering is..Am I letting the world pass me by ? If I dyed my hair and my beard, would I suddenly know how to surf and play bass ? Has my grey hair been holding me back all these years ? that would really suck, because I have always felt that I was a surfing bassist stuck in the body of a clumsy, tone deaf idiot.

Is "Touch Of Grey" or "Just For Men" the answer to a question I didn't realize I should be asking ?